"I've a right smart notion of tryin' Nigger Head chute!"
"No! Go way!" said Jerry.
"Sho as yoh live, I'll be ginger-gingered to ginger ef I aint! See here, by ginger. Las' time I wus down I noticed a powerful strong kerrent settin' in 'round Frenchman's pint, inter the old channel. 'Taint morn ten yars ago sense we yosed toh go that channel, Jerry. Hit wus right arter the spring flood of sixty-six, when the river cut thro' up at Bordens, thet the kerrent shot off the pint instead of a goin' around hit, an' left thet great, big san' flat thar, five miles wide. Now thet she's bruk thro' onto Hempen's Landin' the kerrent's changin' agin, an' when I kem up on the Bismark frum thet las' trip I was down, I wus up in the pilot-house 'long with Jeff Neff, an' I pinted it out to Jeff, an' Jeff sed as how he 'lowed thar'd be the channel agin afore nex' spring! I've a heap mind toh try it;—by ginger!"
But Lieutenant Jarphly was averse to the experiment. For the reason, perhaps, that with nautical prescience, he knew that it involved some extra exertions upon the gouger. The more he objected, however, the more Cap'n Smiff was determined upon the undertaking.
"By ginger! I'll doh it, I swar I will! See here, Jerry, less see wot luck's in hit," and he picked up a broad stave, and expectorating a puddle of tobacco-juice on one side of it, remarked:
"No fur hit, Jerry; chute or no chute—wet or dry? Sing out!" and he whirled the stave in the air.
"Dry!" cried Jerry.
"Wet she is, by ginger!" said Cap'n Smiff, contemplating his sign manual, and little dreaming that the lives of two human beings had hung upon the result.
"Wet she is; and the chute we take. Oars!"
This last brought the crew from their slumbers to the sweeps, and with steady strokes they commenced propelling the "Roarer" toward the distant point.